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Off to be a Wizard (Magic 2.0) (A Review)

My first encounter with Scott Meyer’s Off to be the Wizard was a rushed
engagement; it was a book which I only bought and read since I needed to review
it as part of an Undergraduate class on Critical Theory. During this initial
reading I did take note of the Arthurian features of the texts but did not give
those features any real acknowledgement. Why, after all, would I? The Arthurian
legend was something well-entrenched in modern culture and so it being in yet
another fantasy text did not mean anything to me.

Now
that I have done some research on the Arthurian legend, however, now that I
have read a Arthurian Romance or two and completed Dorsey Armstrong’s ‘Great
Courses’ series of lectures about the Arthurian legend, I have some more
appreciation for the nuance of the legend. Accordingly, I feel that I should go
back and comment a bit more about Off to
be the Wizard, not only because it was the first book that I reviewed but
also to better explicate some of how the Arthurian legend has been appropriated
and used in Meyer’s context in order to wrestle with contemporary issues.

The
story of Off to be the Wizard is that
of a young hacker-geek—Martin Banks—discovering that reality is in fact a
computer program. He freaks out, of course, but quickly recovers and starts on
finding ways to exploit his discovery in order to better his own life (as any
of us would have likewise done). After tinkering long enough with his
discovery, that of a text file which holds all of his information and that can
be changed to great personal effect, Martin decides/is forced to travel back in
time to live in the middle Ages.

Once there, he
meets a clique of fellow hackers who all at some point or another, located
their own file and altered it, eventually deciding to, likewise, travel back in
time to the medieval days of yore. Martin integrates well to this surprise
group and quickly learns the tools of the trade of his makeshift group of
friends; that is to say, he learns how to pretend to be busy—i.e., he learns
how to use his digital file in order to appear magical to the ignorant
townspeople of the early eleventh century. Why? Well, if you are going to mooch
off of the local townsfolk, then you at least need to pretend to be a
productive member of the community!

This routine goes
on for a while as Martin is trained on the specifics of the file and taught how
to appear magical. As the plot moves on, however, he discovers that not all is
as it seems. One of the members, a long time groupie named Jimmy, has been
secretly bending the rules of the group in order to alter history; his effort
is a twisted affair, though. What Jimmy seeks is to distort history, supposedly
ameliorate its ills, while bringing to life his particular vision of
Tolkein-geek fandom (something which includes a healthy amount of eugenics and
Orc-Elf creation). Jimmy is of course opposed on his megalomaniacal plan by his
now former friends and they take up arms to stop his abhorrent dreams of a
totalitarian peace.

Off to be a Wizard is a kind of book
which throws reference after pop culture reference at the reader and is meant
to be enjoyed by the quintessential geek. More to the point, however, it uses
the Arthurian legend as a pretext to muse on serious issues concerning sociality
and governance (as what may be expected from a literary genre heavily invested
in mythologies of aristocratic rule). Something which may not be hugely unique
in regards to the Arthurian canon but is intriguing in relation to a
self-published book hosted by a modern mega-giant of a publisher.

One can see many
elements from previous Arthurian texts nestled within Off to be the Wizard: aspects of Martin’s training in the opening
sections are reminiscent of T.H. White’s The
Once and Future King, the very premise of a modern day man traveling back
in time to the medieval period in order to ‘right the wrongs’ and usher in a
new age of peace and prosperity thanks to their advance knowledge and
technology, is all a callback to Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. All of this while
aspects of the plot itself is adapted from classical Arthurian Romance; in
Meyer’s text, though love interests play little role in the narrative itself,
we do see the reprisal of Lancelot’s betrayal of King Arthur in the form of
Jimmy’s betrayal of his former friends by his shattering of the code of conduct
which had previously bound him.

What makes all of
this noteworthy, however, is its subversion of the typical Arthurian trope.
Whereas in the normal Arthurian tale it is lust and desire which precipitates
the downfall of King Arthur, all in order to pontificate upon moral virtues of
conservative living, in Off to be the
Wizard we see more heady topics explored.

King Arthur in
Meyer’s text is a minor figure. In fact, he is not the historical Arthur; he is
merely a king named Arthur because
that is what Jimmy demanded in order to bring his literal fantasy to life. The
King Arthur here is but a mere puppet of Jimmy’s obscene power phantasies. Such
a reformulation of King Arthur brings to light issues of social rule—when a
figure as legendary and messianic as King Arthur is reduced to a shadow of his
former self and enslaved to a wimpy time-traveling geek, what are we to make of
the author’s exploration of how power dynamics flow in a highly stratified
Technocratic society? Specifically, the sort of society which features
self-made ‘Wizards’ mooching off of the poor working class as they pretend to
be busy?

Such a question
probably pales in comparison to how eugenics is treated, however: Jimmy
attempts to use Eugenics—i.e., the alteration of the commoners program
subroutines—as a means to bring about the entry of phantasy, the literal
impossible, into reality, thus rendering obsolete the psychological complexes
of Freud and Lacan, in favor instead of pushing a elimination of a need to
withdraw from society; essentially, Jimmy feels that the eradication of social
alienation, of the working class’s estrangement from the means of what they
produce and from their own “Species Being,” (to quote a young Marx) is best
achieved by collapsing the distinction between what we know as
reality—technology, medicine, science—with what a fictional universe
understands as reality—magic, non-human intelligent life, and fantastical
anti-physics and anti-realism. Jimmy feels that if the surface illusion, that
which constitutes a normal bourgeois democracy, is disturbed, if life is made
more like the fantasy realms of J.R.R Tolkien and C.S Lewis, then the
mechanical process of labor exploitation which subtend all of the misery and
anguish of late capitalism, will cease to be detrimental to societally at
large.

Jimmy is a figure
seldom seen in Arthurian literature and adaptations. Meyer essentially fuses
Twain’s adaptation with the modern Lit-RPG sub-genre in order to warp the idea
of Lancelot’s gallantry; Jimmy-Lancelot becomes the updated Lancelot—he is a
figure who turns his back on his friends not for the love of a woman, something
which is irrelevant in our postmodern age of gender-sexuality plurality, but
for the love of historical fantasy; Jimmy’s undertaking is an attempt to make
real Geoffrey of Monmouth’s historical revision but for the whole of human
history instead of merely England. Jimmy’s effort to woe history by his own
hand thus constitutes a negative enlightenment, marking knightly gallantry,
therefore, as a curse—the very antithesis of the original Arthurian ideal.

In the end, Off to be the Wizard is a curious start to
a trilogy of what I anticipate will be differently flavored medieval Romances
set against modern issues. Perhaps I will be wrong, however, and the following
installments will be let downs… but maybe not. I will simply have to read them
for myself and if they have content worth probing I will post my review here.
In the interim, however, I will sign off by remarking how much I enjoyed
Meyer’s piece, despite some of its iffy ideological connotations concerning
social organization. It is a piece of YA literature which, I feel, many young
men and women will enjoy if they have had at least a passing flirtation with
the Arthurian legend.

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Lately, I was browsing around online and found another handy resource for aspiring medievalists.

Enter, Western Michigan University's Medieval Institute!

The site has links to an extensive book shop, scholarly journals, as well as a free download. See below for links.

General listing: http://scholarworks.wmich.edu/medievalpress/
Index of titles available for purchase: http://www.wmich.edu/medievalpublications/all-titles
The 'Medieval Globe' book(s): http://scholarworks.wmich.edu/medieval_globe/ (Click on title(s) for free download)

Okay, that is all for now. Sometime soon I think that I would like to organize all of my resource links so that I, as well as you, have a concrete listing of reliable resources. Until then, we shall have to make due.